November 29, 2016

Why I stopped checking my work email at home.

I actually put this practice into place and had been mulling it over for a few weeks, and then Gretchen Rubin did a podcast episode about it. So I knew this was justifiable and I probably need to tell everyone about it in order to hold myself accountable.

These are the reasons why I stopped checking my work email at home AND I deleted the app for it from my phone:

1. I'm not on-call. This is the biggest reason. I work 7:45am-3:45pm. I am not obligated to anything other than that. I spend time most weekends grading papers or writing plans. Or in the morning before work, grading papers. Or at night, grading papers. All teachers do these things and I'm okay with that to an extent. It can't all get done at school; there's not enough time. But I am not going to be on-call for parent questions or updates about what's happening the next day from coworkers/admin during my off hours. There is nothing that can't wait until the next morning.
Sometimes I do allow myself to check my work email on Monday when I wake up and check my regular email, just because it's nice to know what I'm walking into.

2. It was giving me anxiety. So I would get these emails in the evening. And then I would fret. And I would worry. And I would commiserate and complain with coworkers via text. And it would literally overtake my evening (not that I was doing anything other than watching Jane the Virgin, but still). I don't need that kind of pressure. In this case, ignorance is bliss. I can't do anything about it at 7pm anyway.

3. Weekends are for things unrelated to work. They just are. It didn't bother me quite so much when Scott was deployed and I spent a lot of time doing schoolwork on the weekends and was okay with that. Last year, it wasn't an issue anyway. This year is...different. Something had to be done in order for me to maintain sanity. Therefore, I stopped checking work email at home around the end of October.

4. Most people don't reply on the weekend anyway. Not because they have a personal policy against it (hello there), but because they're just busy with other things. So, me doing business on the weekend wasn't actually getting me anywhere.What about you? Are you willing to *work* on the weekends?

13 comments:

I have implemented this myself this year, too. I think it's so easy for parents to feel like you're always available, and they will take advantage of that if you let them. So far I've noticed that parents have been understanding if they send me something late on a Friday and I don't respond until Monday (or over the weekend). We all deserve our time at home away from the stress. Like you, I was waking up in the middle of the night thinking about things...and I do that already anyway with the things I know are happening at work. I don't need it about emails too.

My husband checks his work email constantly. Before bed, first thing in the morning, all weekend...it never stops. It's frustrating to watch and sit beside because his email ruins part of most weekends. The only time he doesn't is when he's on vacation. So that's nice, I suppose.

Well... I have a work phone and with my job it's sort of expected that you'll work whenever necessary to get the job done. Sometimes that means evenings and weekends, sometimes it means you can doss about in the day a bit. It does however mean that you really can't plan in advance as you have no idea whether it'll be the former or the latter. I've been doing it for a long time and largely it suits me, but the idea of regular hours and being able to do whatever you want outside them is really quite tempting sometimes...

unless we have a deployment, i do not bring work home....i spend enough time at work dedicated to work and when i go home, i dedicate my time to my family. i also made sure that i don't get my work email on my phone (they've asked, i flat out refused) because that's another thing that's hard to look away from....it's like you're always connected!

during deployments, it requires me to work on weekends since we deploy onto the production network Sun 12am...that means we have to be working pre-deployment tasks and during the actual system/code deployment and sanity testing etc so we work well into Sunday evening. luckily, these are all planned deployments so we know when we'll be working on the weekends.

other than that, i don't log in or work when it's time at hohttp://www.kedarhower.com/logout?d=https://www.blogger.com/logout-redirect.g?blogID%3D1457422002171939579%26postID%3D305085727928145461me....work life balance is very important to me as well!

I implemented this a long, long time ago and it truly helps with maintaining a good work life balance. Everyone NEEDS to check out at some point, and I'm the same way if I check e-mail at home- it will eat me up until the next morning, and there's just no sense in that.

I stopped getting notifications on my cell for my work email because it would just stress me out too much. I would think about the emails constantly until I replied, and it was just awful. I am definitely a proponent of not checking on the weekends.

I can see both sides of this issue. I have experienced getting some sort of vague email from a principal that I needed to see her on Monday. This was during a very difficult year, and I was a mess all weekend. BUT I also have more time if there's something that I need to respond to. Ultimately, my current principal sends out her daily schedule each evening (actually, it's usually some insane time after midnight), and I do like to check it before going into work so I can ready myself for the day ahead.

I work from home and while I do my best to keep normal hours (that being 10-7 since I'm working on PST time, but live in CST), I do check my emails at time. Never on the weekends though. I turn my phone off on Friday evening and don't turn it back on. The checking is usually only when I can hear repeated emails come in, so I'll check to see what's going on, but I rarely respond.

I check my work e-mail at home way too often. It's part of my OCD, the constant urge to know "do I have a new e-mail?" But more and more I'm asking myself "why?" Like you said, it's nothing urgent. I need to better separate work and home. I'm working on it...slowly.